Mark Patinkin: Tradition grinds on at Kenyon’s Grist Mill in South Kingstown, R.I.

I felt I’d arrived at the Lourdes of Rhode Island, Kenyon’s Grist Mill, where they make one of the state’s iconic products: jonnycakes. They’re legendary even nationally: Last December, Esquire magazine...

I felt I’d arrived at the Lourdes of Rhode Island, Kenyon’s Grist Mill, where they make one of the state’s iconic products: jonnycakes.

They’re legendary even nationally: Last December, Esquire magazine named 45 “Great American Things,” including Kentucky bourbon, the Louisville Slugger …

… and jonnycakes.

Not just any jonnycakes — the ones from Kenyon’s in South Kingstown.

Despite its fame, it’s a small operation. Kenyon’s Grist Mill consists of two big milling stones in what looks like a quaint historic house.

I met owner Paul Drumm III there. He’s 51 and not a typical CEO; he had on a gray T-shirt, jeans and yellow work boots.

He was also covered in grain dust. That’s because they were milling.

I watched as Drumm’s head guy — 49-year-old Russell Spencer — stood over the heart of the operation: A pair of 2-ton granite grinding stones shaped like tractor wheels on top of each other. Spencer poured wheat kernels through a hole in the top one. They were soon ground into flour and spit out below.

It’s more personal than the mass steel-milling done by industrial food companies, and Drumm explains that stone milling preserves more nutrients and, when done right, leaves the ideal texture.

I told him I had an embarrassing question. I’d come to do a story on Kenyon’s but had no idea what a jonnycake was.

He laughed and explained it’s a cake made from cornmeal — farmers used to call it grist — instead of wheat flour.

“You mean it’s a pancake?”

That brought a stern look from Rich Call, 56, the mill’s bearded production assistant. Some, he told me, would consider it blasphemy to refer to a jonnycake as a pancake. These, he said, were among the original American food going back to the Pilgrims themselves.

Kenyon’s grinds plenty of other grains, but the jonnycake, said Call, is a very different creature. They taste more like a crunchy form of cornbread, done in thick, circular cakes. They can be four or five inches across, but aficionados, he said, prefer them almost as small as a Morgan silver dollar.

I asked if you coat them in maple syrup.

Call looked stern again.

“Not in South County,” he said, “unless you want to be extradited out of the state.”

I asked which “Johnny” they were named after. Drumm, the owner, shook his head. None.

The Pilgrims, he explained, found Native Americans eating cornmeal mush mixed with water and wanted to find a way to carry it with them, so they began cooking it into cakes on hot stones. That, Drumm continued, made them “traveleable cakes,” or “journey cakes,” pronounced “jarney” back then. Over time, it was Americanized to jonnycakes.

That’s one spelling, though Kenyon spells it out fully as “Johnny cakes.”

Drumm loves to talk about the history. He said it’s the oldest manufacturing business in the state. The acreage around the mill, he said, was given to a group of South County families in a land transfer by King Charles of England. The first mill building was put up in 1696, though later destroyed by fire. The one here now — the “new building” — was built in 1886. The Kenyon family bought it in 1909 and became the first to start selling cornmeal in small boxes.

Drumm’s father — Paul Drumm Jr. — was an IBM computer repairman who, at age 41, looked at the mill as a possible site for an antique and craft business for his wife. But he grew intrigued with the operation and, in 1971, mortgaged his house to buy it. He soon fell in love with the life of a cornmeal maker. It has been his main pursuit ever since. He’s now in his 80s.

“He says it was one of the two best decisions of his life,” his son recalled, “buying the mill and marrying my mother.”

Paul Drumm III started at an even younger age than his dad, helping out when he was around 10, then going into it full-time after graduating from the University of Rhode Island in 1984. He’s been the main boss for more than 15 years.

Some of their numbers are trade secrets, but Drumm says they today grind between 30 and 60 tons of grains a year, and sell about 100,000 1- to 6-pound bags of mix under the Kenyon name. He said it’s a lot for the small staff, but they all have picked up his dad’s work ethic.

“He said if you don’t work hard seven days a week, you’re lazy,” Drumm III told me.

As we talked, Spencer, who has been here 20 years, continued milling 600 pounds of wheat kernels. The building vibrated as the stones turned. Spencer kept making small adjustments to the wheels. Drumm said they all learned the art of milling from “Old Charlie Walmsley” — a Narragansett Indian who was Kenyon’s master miller when the Drumms took over.

To mill perfect cornmeal, Drumm explained, you have to feed the grain just right while adjusting the sliver of space between the stones. You do it by feel and ear. Even outside the building, recalled Drumm, Charlie Walmsley could “hear” if the stones weren’t close enough, and he’d call out for them to adjust it. If the final product wasn’t fine enough, he’d say, “What are you making, horse feed there?”

I asked Spencer what’s kept him here so long.

“I know a lot of people who don’t like their jobs,” he said. He loves his, and loves the location, too: Surrounded by the Queen River, a waterfall and scenic woods.

The Kenyon Corn Meal Company, as it’s officially called, sells sacks of meals and flours as well as the smaller mix bags that it’s known for. The company’s best-seller is actually the clam cake and fritter mix, but jonnycake mix is a close second.

This weekend, Kenyon’s Grist Mill is holding its “Johnny Cake Festival” on the acreage around its building. A key attraction, says Drumm, will be demonstrations of jonnycake making. The master, he says, is Dick Donnelly, a longtime friend of the mill and former school principal now in his 70s who some might call the Julia Child of jonnycakes. He was featured making them on “The Martha Stewart Show,” and will be at the festival.

Call, the bearded assistant, says purists like Donnelly don’t suggest soaking jonnycakes in syrup like pancakes. But Drumm says two other longtime experts who will also be doing demos — Barbara Stetson and Tom Gardiner — are more liberal.

He adds there are endless ways to serve jonnycakes. The South County style, he said, is to make them thick — almost half an inch. “Newport style” is thinner so they’re crunchy all the way through.

He’s seen them with smoked salmon, seafood Newburg and mascarpone cheese — even with caviar. You can add cream sauce and peas. Some like them with sausage gravy, others with salsa or jelly.

The boss’ favorite? Drumm buys thick-slab bacon at Ma and Pa’s Country Store in Hope Valley, and puts that on top.

“Oh my God,” he says. “It’s phenomenal.”

I noticed the mill is said to be in the village of Usquepaug, but there’s nothing else around it, so I asked Drumm where the actual town is. He said this is it. There used to be a tavern, post office and cider press here, but they’re gone. The village of Usquepaug is now just the Kenyon mill.

“People ask where the hell is Usquepaug?” jokes Drumm. “I tell them halfway between Quonochontaug and Escoheag.”

Drumm spends his time in management tasks but says two other parts of the job give him the most fulfillment.

One is when he gets to do the milling himself.

The other is keeping alive a 300-year-old Rhode Island tradition.

“There was a young man working for us who heard the mill start up for the first time,” Drumm recalls, “and he said, ‘That’s pretty cool. That’s the same sound they heard when they opened the mill.’”

Drumm liked that. He often thinks about the footsteps that have gone through this property, from the Narragansetts to the early mill workers.

“And now it’s our footprints,” he says.

He adds: “It tells me I better do a good job. We’re caretakers of the tradition.”

At that, he walked outside around the back by the Queen River and nearby waterfall. The afternoon sun lit up the foliage.

For a moment, Drumm was quiet as he took it all in.

He said it’s a beautiful place.

And a beautiful life.

Kenyon’s jonnycake recipe

1 cup Kenyon’s Johnny Cake Corn Meal

1/2 tsp. salt

1 tsp. sugar

1 1/4 to 1 1/2 cups boiling water

Combine dry ingredients in a bowl. Pour boiling water over mixture gradually to make a “ploppy” batter, adding milk if desired, to thin to a consistency that will drop off the end of a spoon. Drop onto a well-greased griddle or fry pan and cook for 6 minutes, drizzle with oil, then flip and cook an additional 5-6 minutes.

Kenyon's Johnny Cake Festival continues Sunday, Oct. 20, from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. There will be bluegrass music on two stages, a Colonial encampment and dozens of artisan, animal and restaurant exhibits. Free parking is at Washington County Fairgrounds nearby with regular shuttle buses. Admission is $3 per person with children under 5 free. Go to johnnycakefestival.com.